


adarlan's bane is a wolf, a demon; is a man

by fitzchivalryfarseer



Category: Throne of Glass Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Aedion-centric, Angst, Character Death, Gen, M/M, Origin Story, aedion ashryver needs a hug, alcohol tw, blood tw, does aedion/terrasen count as a relationship cos it seems canon enough for me, is the lord of the north actually a character? nobody knows, not a happy fic there is so much misery, tog mini bang, written pre-eos so dont eat me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-16
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-15 08:34:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8049478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fitzchivalryfarseer/pseuds/fitzchivalryfarseer
Summary: Written for the TOG Mini Bang, paired with @valgandfae. Includes references to The Story of Tonight (Hamilton) and Drink With Me (Les Miserables)
Collected here in roughly chronological order are parts of Aedion Ashryver's life, offering a glimpse of what it must have been like for one young, terror-stricken boy, struggling to stay afloat in the days past Adarlan's initial invasion. 
Driven first to the rebels, then to Adarlan, facing scorn and mockery and degradation, fighting for love and loyalty and the shattered throne he still served, Aedion Ashryver returned to the fractured North, binding himself to Terrasen by blood and blade, sworn to the land and the people who occupied it. The Wolf of the North stood guard over his country, and both gods and men stood in awe.





	adarlan's bane is a wolf, a demon; is a man

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for the Throne of Glass Minibang in 2016, pre-Empire of Storms release, collaborating with the absolutely amazing Peggy at valgandfae.tumblr.com.

 When Aedion finds him, he is very near death, gazing with a kind of horrified fascination at the chipped blade of his sword.

“Boy,” he greets Aedion. He flips the sword in his hands, rapping a knuckle solidly against the pommel. “You know, this held up pretty well.” 

Aedion nods, quickly, crouching down and reaching out to pull at a piece of torn cloth, loose threads pulling against the wound and causing him to bite down a curse.

“Leave it,” he snaps, swatting at Aedion’s hands. “Can’t be helped.”

“You’ll die out here.”

“Yes.” He regrets the word almost as soon as it leaves his mouth. It seems very final now. He lets his head fall back and watches the corpse birds wheel in the darkening sky. Every so often, one darts down, wings tucked in close to its body. Sharp and sure as a spear thrust. He shudders. A few yards away, a corpse bird dips its beak into a man’s caved-in chest, blood slicking the feathers on its narrow head and chest.

One cocks its head at him, studying him with glinting black eyes. It hops a step closer.

He looks away, meeting Aedion’s blue-green eyes. Helmet off, the boy’s hair is shaved close to his scalp. It makes his whole head smaller, makes him look his thirteen years. Blood is smeared across his light armour, still a little big for him despite the straps pulled tight.

“I thought I told you to stay out of the fighting.”

“You needed me.”

He coughs. There is something warm and thick and heavy in his throat. A little like pride, but more like blood.

“Well.” Too late to do anything about that. “You killed him, then?”

Aedion nods.

“I’m sorry you-” it was getting harder to breathe, now - “had to do that.”

“Don’t be.” Despite his words, Aedion’s voice quivers. They both pretend they didn’t hear it. Aedion’s hand finds his and squeezes tight. Blood on both their hands, then. Sticky, cooling, scarlet.

“You’ll bury me?”

“Of course. Under the stars.”

Good. Good. He tries to find breath to tell the boy that, but breath is not coming easily right now. Blood is pulsing from his side and pooling in the mud.

“Bastard got my lungs,” he offers as some sort of distraction.

“I can see that.”

“Don’t play smart-ass with dying men.”

“Sorry.”

He wasn’t really sorry, the bastard.

“Don’t want a corpse bird to get me now, you hear?” His voice shakes, the fear coming through as the chill from the ground seeps up through his clothes. Blood comes out hot and dries cold, he thinks. I don’t want to die. “Don’t want one of them pecking at my guts.”

“They won’t.” At his side, Aedion’s voice is gentle. Why can’t he see the boy? Getting dark now, the sky. Can’t see the birds for the gathering clouds.

“Wish I could see them- again. One last time. Alive- and- and happy, all of us.”

“You will,” Aedion promises, hands tight around the dying man’s. “You’ll see them again.”

“Take care of our country, boy. Take care of our land.”

“Always. Always.”

“And- and you take care of yourself, hear me?”

No reply to that. He can hear the boy’s steady breathing, juxtaposed against his own struggling, jerky breaths. “Hear me?”

“Yes,” softly.

“Old enough to drink, now. Raise a glass for me.”

“Raise a glass to freedom,” the boy murmurs, head bowed, the tears dripping silently off his face. “Here’s to you, old man.”

“That’s - that’s - the right - idea.” It’s cold. He doesn’t want to die cold, and he can’t _breathe._

He gropes in the mud for his sword, feeling for the rough leather grip. Aedion drops it in his free hand. “My father’s sword. You bury me with this, alright? Bury me with this.”

“I will.”

“Live well, Aedion.” First time he hasn’t called him boy. Hope he likes that.

“Goodbye, old man.”

He takes a last shuddering breath and slips away.

 

xxx

 

When Aedion first comes to the rebel camps it is three days after the first push north from Adarlan, four days after the murders of Terrasen’s royal family. Adarlanian soldiers are crawling up from the south, their massive warships sailing up Terrasen’s coast. Amidst the political chaos, military leaders struggle to pull together a defense force; the standing army, stubborn and proud, holds its ground, but the _fyrd_ , the force of the common men, the force of the free people, does not answer the call 

The rebel forces are those of the _fyrd_ who gather themselves and race south, loyal and logical enough to see that the _fyrd_ , next to the standing army, is Terrasen’s best chance of survival. When their leaders meet together, in the first and last meeting they will hold in person, the _fyrd_ is ordered to split from the main force of the army, in the hopes that they can escape notice and work more quietly while the garbed and weapon-bearing soldiers take the majority of Adarlan’s attention, and that perhaps, after those same soldiers took death in the name of their country, the _fyrd_ might live on to fight for the people of the land.

At heart they are still the common people, those who know the grave threat of winter and the cruelty of summer droughts, and they take Aedion to fight for them when the army refuses him, tells him to flee with those taking ship off Terrasen’s coast.

The rebels take him, and arm him as best they can, and send him off to train with an older man, a hunter and trapper who knows both the quiet ways of the woods and the dirty tricks of pub-brawling, the kind he’d never learned in the castle yard.

Very soon they’re called to fight, and Aedion fights his first battle, kills his first man, stumbles through the field of dead and dying, their eyes sharp and accusing on his back. He stands in a field liberally coated with blood, leaning on his sword, the oversized, mismatched bits of armour they gave him shaking on his frame.

That night, in the messy frenzy of corpse birds feasting, Aedion drags away a body, and digs a grave for both his mentor and his short-lived youth.

 

xxx

 

The tavern goes quiet when he steps in, the creak of the door sending a sweep of silence across the noisy, colourful tables. 

At thirteen, Aedion is still built sparingly, is still small and slim, but he fights as brutally as any mercenary, and as wildly as a devil or a madman. This afternoon proved that.

A rebel captain stirs in his seat at the wash of cold air across his back. Aedion eases the door closed and leans against it, casual posture forced.

“Come in, lad.”

The captain waves Aedion closer, pointedly ignoring the stares, and signals for another mug of beer. The tavern-keeper starts, opens his mouth, closes his mouth, and finally turns around to fill another mug.

“Thank you, captain,” Aedion says quietly, sliding onto the bench.

The captain looks down at the table, finger tapping against his mug. Bubbles fly upward in the thick golden liquid. Everyone is or will be drinking tonight, and some into the early morning, some in dark and bitter grief, mindless and numb in their pain, and others high off the desperation of battle and the thin edge of their victory.

He thinks Aedion really should be the latter, but there’s a heaviness in his bones telling him otherwise.

The mug he called for is set down abruptly, beer foam sloshing off the rim to speckle the dark grain of the table with white droplets.

The tavern-keeper’s wife glares at him, furious, and wheels away, hands twisting at her apron like she means to strangle the stained cloth into submission. Aedion stands, stunned, and retains enough manners to call, “Goodwife-” after her, the word hanging as he scrambles for words. “What is the matter?”

“You’re the matter,” she snaps, clearing her throat against the guilt gathering there, and whirls back, whirls to see the thin young man with one hesitant hand on the edge of the table and a stricken look on his face.

“You’re the matter, boy, how old are you?” She shakes her head. “Not much older than the princess herself, I reckon, and you shouldn’t-”

“I know I should have died with her.” Aedion’s voice is colder than the cut of steel, the words precise and short. He stands stiffly, spine locked straight.

“I know I should have died with her. You don’t have to remind me.”

The captain rises slowly from his seat. Aedion jerks away from his touch, shame and grief battling in his wide turquoise eyes.

“I know she should have lived in my place. I know I should have died before letting anything happen to her.” He looks straight at the goodwife, voice strangled as he chokes out, “Goodwife, don’t you think I _know?_ ”

“Boy,” she begins after a pause, shocked and soft, “that’s not what I meant-”

Aedion steps free of the bench and glances at the door. “Thank you for your hospitality.” He nods sharply, snatches up his cloak, and pushes out into the raw wind and ice, leaving the beer mug untouched on the table.

“I didn’t mean that,” the goodwife whispers to the silence in the tavern. “I only meant - boys like him shouldn’t be fighting our war.” She sobs. “Boys like him should be living, but you look in his eyes - he doesn’t look like he’ll ever smile again.”

“Raise a glass,” the captain mutters bitterly, and drinks deep.

 

xxx

 

When the general of the Adarlanian forces wakes, yawns, and goes in search of a hot breakfast, what he finds instead are two bemused guards watching a young man kneel just outside the boundaries of the camp, knees sinking in the light, wet snow. A sword is laid across the ground in front of him and as the general approaches the young man looks up and grins, an arrogant grin fit for a devil.

“Good morning, general,” the young man calls. “My name is Aedion Ashryver, and I’m here to turn myself in.”

 

xxx

 

They have him locked up and chained securely in the middle of camp when a sentry’s shrill yell splits the air and the camp explodes into action. The soldiers that have gathered around Aedion drop what they’re doing and run to their posts, drawing weapons as they go.

An archer comes up behind the thick wooden pole, rattling Aedion’s chains to make sure he’s held fast. His breath is warm on the back of Aedion’s neck as he warns in an undertone, “I wouldn’t want to be you, lad.”

“You know,” Aedion replies, twisting his head as far back as his neck will allow, “I’m starting to think I don’t want to be me either.”

The archer smiles briefly, showing a flash of yellow teeth, and is gone. Aedion sags against the pole, cursing the stiffness in his shoulders, and watches the heated back-and-forth of the melee.

A rebel fighter makes it out of the battle and stumbles towards Aedion, squinting against the blood and sweat running down his forehead.

“That you, Ashryver?” he calls, and Aedion nods.

He sheathes his sword and hurries closer, scowling at Aedion’s chains.

“What you doing here, boy? Got yourself captured on some fool mission?” The anger in his voice is real and withering enough that Aedion almost expects the chains to crack straight down the middle.

“No, I-” Aedion coughs and clears his throat, cursing the frigid air. “Don’t let me loose,” he pleads, voice hoarse and soft. “Don’t let me loose, I’ll have to kill you.”

Instinctively, the rebel steps back, one hand going to the hilt of his sword. “What are you saying, boy?” The words come slowly, uncertain and wary and maybe just a little afraid.

He knows how it must sound, but, “I turned myself in this morning,” he confesses, and pauses, trying to fit the words together right.

“You damn _bastard_ , I should’ve known.” The rebel turns away, spits in the snow. _“Traitor.”_ The word has a breathless, stunned sound to it, but Aedion feels it like a punch to the gut nonetheless.

“No,” he tries, but his voice is muted in his throat, and the rebel looks at him with such heartbreak and fury in his eyes that it flays him to the bone.

“Traitor!” the rebel cries again, the word ringing in Aedion’s ears. Somehow it hurts more than the fist he slams into Aedion’s jaw, knuckles loud where they hit the bone, or the tears running down the man’s face as he knees Aedion in the gut. The rebel backs off, chest heaving, and barrels in again, another fist catching Aedion in the mouth like a sledgehammer. “Gods, they _loved you!”_

“I still serve my country,” Aedion croaks. He spits blood and a tooth out onto the snow. “Believe of me what you will.”

“Don’t lie to me.” This with venom, voice taut with anger. Muscles cord in the rebel’s chest and along his arms.

“I can’t bring Adarlan down from the outside,” Aedion whispers, raising his head to look at the rebel. The stickiness of blood drying is on his chin. “But perhaps I can from the inside.”

The rebel just shakes his head, disbelieving. “You’d go into the lion’s own den? That’s a suicide plan. They’ll kill you just for your blood.”

“Not if they want me as a symbol. Not if they want to show how Terrasen has crumbled inwards.” Aedion smiles a broken smile through a bloody mouth.

“I’d go into the lion’s own den, and I’d _beard_ it there.”

The rebel retreats some steps, glancing back at the battle still seething around them. The tide is turning, Adarlan’s scarlet banner being raised above the camp again. “Damn this,” he snarls. “Our forces aren’t enough. Terrasen-”

“Has always been a country of peace.” Their eyes meet, and hold, blue-green to brown. “You need me on the inside.”

“Trust me,” he whispers urgently. Past the rebel, a man falls into a firepit as he dies, heavy body smothering the flames. _“Trust me.”_

The rebel laughs, bitter and ugly. “I don’t have much choice, do I? You’d go into the mouth of hell itself if it meant stopping them, and so would I.”

“I would. In an instant.”

“Hopeless patriots, aren’t we?”

“Always.” They exchange a brief smile. The last of the doubt is clearing from the rebel’s eyes. “I may not live to see the end of this, but I will gladly join the fight, and I will not give in. On that you have my word,” Aedion promises.

“It’s a brave thing you’re doing.” The rebel hesitates, sword drawn halfway out of its sheath. “Is there… is there anything I can do for you?”

“Nothing I can’t do for myself. Good luck to you, sir, and live well.”

“Thank you.” Their eyes meet a final time across the snow and the rebel nods solemnly in farewell. “Live well, Prince.”

 

xxx

 

He is not taken immediately down to Rifthold, as he had assumed he would be. Rather, he spends a week in the camp with the Adarlanian forces, awaiting word from the king.

They chain him to the pole the first three days, shackled by heavy metal links to the straight, solid wood. He stands in the middle of the camp, feet going numb in the softly falling snow. Soldiers turn out to taunt him, turn out to laugh at the chained, snarling boy who can barely move for how tight they’ve bound him.

When night falls, they move him to a small tent, tie his hands behind his back, and set a hound and two guards to watch him as he sleeps. Aedion reckons they care more about his life than he does, and then realizes that that’s not true, because he has a mission now.

By the third day, the guards are more bored than wary. He thinks about running, but the night is fierce to those ill-equipped and the tent too far from the edge of camp.

They wake him early on the fourth day and march him through the pre-dawn dark, two guards and a boy wrapped up in their individual cloaks against a howling snowstorm, powdery snow and ice blowing into their eyes as they weave through the looming tents.

They pass a sentry on watch, cloak startling in its sudden dark red, and a stallion that snorts at the sight of them, warm breath forming clouds that the wind promptly whisks away.

The guards grumble and swear and move Aedion along with two firm hands on his shoulders, only stopping when dark-garbed soldiers materialize in front of them, driving their spears to the ground to block their way forward. Sudden and forbidding, their dark clothes make them look like patches of the night, thick cloaks swirling out behind them in the grasp of the wind.

“Announce yourselves, sir,” one of the soldiers commands, tone surprisingly mild.

The guard on Aedion’s right takes his hand off and steps forward. “My name is Rygan, of Rifthold. My companions are Kol, of Metrecothe, and Aedion Ashryver, Prince of the Ashryver line.”

The soldier inclines his head. “The general has been waiting for you,” he remarks, and stands to the side to let them pass.

 

xxx

 

The way the general seems to have been built is along a stretched-out, narrow frame. Lean and long-limbed, something about him reminds Aedion of the Fae’s bodies, their unnatural proportions and casually held power.

The first time Aedion had seen the general had been the morning he’d turned himself in. He can’t remember much of that morning, only a bleak, hard despair that kept him moving, slogging through the snow towards the glowing fires of the camp. He’d barely registered the words he’d spoken when he finally reached the camp, or what the general said to the soldiers that grasped him and refused to let him fall, walking him through the camp to reach the wooden pole that stood, steadfast and lonely, in the middle of the camp, and then chaining him there.

So he doesn’t, or didn’t, remember much of the man that led Adarlan’s forces. Until now. Until the general rises from behind his desk, towering over them, and strides forward to take Aedion’s chin in his hand, tilting his face upward to get a better look.

Aedion only reaches mid-chest on this man, and a sideways glance at the taller of his guards places him at shoulder height. The general reaches extraordinary heights, and his proximity allows Aedion to scent him - there is something old and yet familiar about him, something that warns Aedion that this is a predator, untamed and fearsome. He can’t place the scent. It’s like the edge of a forgotten memory.

“Who did this to you?” the general demands suddenly, voice low and thrumming with the smallest hint of anger. His fingers run down Aedion’s jaw, firm but not harsh, skirting around the bruises forming. He forces Aedion to meet his eyes, tawny and burning in their intensity. “Who did this to you?” he repeats, and the guards at Aedion’s side startle and stand straighter.

“A rebel and I came to blows during the fighting.” It takes all of Aedion’s willpower to keep his head up and his eyes staring back into the general’s. He resists the instinctive urge to jerk his head away. There is something about this man, something imposing and intimidating that goes beyond his physical size.

“You were chained,” the general recalls, sounding almost sick at the realisation. Some incomprehensible emotion flashes across his eyes. “I regret it took me so long to summon you.” The general hesitates, a pause so fleeting Aedion doubts the guards picked it up.

“I was remiss. A Prince of your blood should not have been… neglected, or treated in the way I have treated you.” The general searches Aedion’s eyes keenly as he speaks, looking for something, but what, he cannot tell. The hand that holds Aedion’s chin is nearly gentle.

Finally, the general releases Aedion and steps back, folding his hands behind his back. His clothes are finely made and fit him well, though the fashion is different from anything Aedion has ever seen before. The sigil across the chest is less stylized than he is used to seeing, a bold mountain lion rearing, paws raised and claws extended. The eyes are a particular yellow-brown, Aedion sees, and fight not to immediately glance upward, at the piercing eyes he saw just a moment before. The lion’s fur, done in gold, to match the long golden hair of the general, bound back with a leather strip. Aedion takes a cautious breath, tasting his scent again.

That wild, unbound sharpness… not any kind of lingering perfume. That is big cat. The kind he’d smelled just once off a ghost leopard, the time Rhoe Galathynius had let him ride along on one of his midnight rides.

But this isn’t ghost leopard. Close, but not, and Aedion strongly suspects mountain lion. Which means the general either spends a good deal of time rolling around with stray mountain lions, or he’s a Fae. Aedion is quite inclined to believe the latter.

The general has the slightest smile on his lips as he watches Aedion. “Aedion of House Ashryver,” he says quietly, as if he’s tasting the words on his tongue. “Will you take a meal with me?”

Aedion registers blank shock at the unexpected invitation. The general dismisses his guards, directing them to someplace they can get warmed up. 

He watches them leave, and then takes two decisive steps to the tent flap, where he kneels fluidly and ties it shut. “Well?” he asks over his shoulder, and Aedion realizes he still hasn’t replied.

“I would be pleased to,” Aedion assents warily, aware that he doesn’t have much choice in the matter. The general looks satisfied nonetheless, and as Aedion gazes at him he notes two things: one, that the general seems accustomed to the cold, and two, that the general looks like he’s used to doing things by hand. By his own hand.

“You’re not what I expected,” Aedion almost says, but doesn’t, because what he means to say is, “A man like you seems more a warrior than a general,” and what he means under it all is, “I didn’t think a man from Adarlan could remind me so of the warriors of Terrasen. 

It’s not just how he takes doing things for himself in stride, or the way his garb is opulent but equally suited to court as to combat. It’s how he treated Aedion, with honour and honesty, and in the kindness he showed when he dismissed Aedion’s guards, but insisted they could warm themselves up instead of waiting in the cold. It’s in the way he hadn’t hesitated to apologize for the way he’d had Aedion chained, and how he’d waited for Aedion to accept his request, despite the obvious difference in power.

Strange, those small things, how they added up to someone Aedion found himself respecting, even without really knowing him.

It was a shame, really, how he was on the enemy side.

“Sometimes, you look into the heart of your enemy,” the general observes heavily, “and you see that he is just a man. Sometimes, I think that’s the saddest part of war.”

Aedion makes no reply. The general stalks back across the tent and seats himself, crossing one long leg over the other and determinedly looking both casual and comfortable in a chair that wobbles and creaks dangerously under his gigantic frame.

“But you’re still a boy,” the general muses, though the languid tone of voice is completely at odds with how focused and intent his eyes are. “Come, sit down.” He waves at the chair in front of his desk.

Aedion remains standing. The general raises his head to look at him. Odd, to see the tall, sprawled-out man looking up at him, smiling thinly. His eyes are hard as he chides, “I wouldn’t kill you in my own tent. Not after sending your guards away.”

Something in his eyes is daring Aedion to take a seat, so, against his better judgment, he sits. The general straightens a little and adds, “Besides, you’re really too valuable to kill.”

“Thanks,” Aedion says coolly, listening to the detached strategy that comes as common sense to this commander.

“Sorry. I’ve spent too many years at war. It becomes part of you,” the general offers as explanation, a touch sheepish. There’s a hunger hidden behind the easy words as he asks, “How old are you?”

“Thirteen,” Aedion answers, and the general nods, as if confirming something to himself. Emotion plays across his features, rendering them softer and more human, before he masters himself again and turns away, getting up and searching for something in the back of the tent.

He returns with a glass and a whisky bottle, the label yellowed and flaking at the edges. A quarter of the bottle is gone already, and the general tips a generous measure into his glass before setting it down onto the table.

“It’s not too early to drink, is it?” the general asks, casting a furtive glance at the light just beginning to seep in through the tent walls. “Gods above, I hope it never gets too early to drink.”

Aedion raises a single eyebrow. The general catches sight of his expression and grins, rueful. “I’m no drunkard, Aedion. Trust me on that. I know control.”

He raises the glass, swirling the liquor around and taking a measured breath of the aroma. Pleased, he takes a drink.

“Now,” he starts, leaning forward in his chair. Deep gold eyes pin Aedion to his seat. “I may not live to see the end of this, but I will gladly join the fight,” he quotes. “I heard you talking to that rebel. It seems you two came to more than blows.”

“Raise a glass to freedom,” Aedion replies, glad his voice doesn’t tremble. “I won’t serve a butcher king.” In a flash, he’s drawn the knife he hid in his boot. “If you try to stop me, general, know that I will take as many soldiers down with me as possible.”

The general regards Aedion with feline indifference. “Sit down.” This time his voice is low and dangerous, the snap of command like steel. Slowly, Aedion pulls the chair out and sits.

The general leans over the table, bracing his weight on his arms as he growls, “I bear no more love for the king of Adarlan than you do.” One large hand wraps around Aedion’s and twists the knife out of his grip. He flips it in his hand and snorts at it.

“Call this a blade?” he asks, disdainful. “You’d hardly be able to prick someone with this.” As if to prove his point, he bends the steel before snapping it in on itself and casting it aside.

“Now you’re unarmed and at my mercy," the general says, and sighs as he drops back into his own chair. “Next time, just deny it. Tell me you did it to stay alive, that you were a coward, anything. Boy, if the king of Adarlan had asked you that question and you’d responded the way you did, you’d be dead right now.”

Aedion’s cheeks flush red. The general picks up the whisky glass again and drinks, more heavily this time.

“Fae senses make whisky tasting so much easier,” he observes to no one in particular. “Oh, breathe, boy. You’re young yet, you’ll learn. Just lie better next time, eh?”

“Aye,” Aedion mutters, unable to meet the general’s eyes.

“If I were you, I’d want to kill him too,” the general offers, more seriously than Aedion expected. He leans forward. “You were guarding the princess, weren’t you?”

“No.” Not easy to say, even to a stranger. The words taste bitter in his mouth. “But I should have been.”

“You couldn’t have done anything.”

“You don’t know that.” Aedion rises, unable to keep still. Anger courses through him, hot and heady, as he paces away from the table and back again. “I swore to protect her. And I broke that oath.”

“You couldn’t have done anything,” the general repeats, dismissive. _“Listen to me,”_ he insists, cutting off Aedion’s retort.

“I went there,” he says, low and terse. “I studied their bodies. I closed their eyes. I looked at that scene and I tracked the prints and I smelled the dried blood in the air.”

“How dare you,” Aedion whispers, shaking. “How dare you!” He flies at the general, who neatly sidesteps.

“Whatever killed them was not an ordinary creature,” the general continues, dodging Aedion’s kick. “It was something old and cruel.” His hand flies up to catch Aedion’s fist. “It wasn’t of this world. The smell was… wrong. I’ve never smelled that before. Harsh, and biting.” Swiftly, he whirls, kicks Aedion’s legs out from under him, and pins his arm behind his back.

“Something powerful,” the general mutters, as if to himself. “Why do you think I’ve been hanging you out these past three days?” He doesn’t wait for Aedion’s reply. “Whatever it is, it wants royal blood, and you walked right into my camp.”

“You’ve been using me as bait,” Aedion grumbles, struggling to get his feet back under him. The general releases him and he stumbles forward, one hand bracing himself on the floor.

“You weren’t in any danger. I was watching, every day.” The general extends a hand to pull Aedion up. “I wouldn’t have let you come to harm.”

Aedion scrambles to his feet, ignoring the offer of help. Impassive, the general lets his hand drop and returns to the table, picking up the whisky glass and draining it.

“To those we lost,” he offers, pouring more liquor in.

“To those we loved,” Aedion counters. The general drinks to that.

“To days gone by,” he suggests, passing the glass to Aedion, who drinks. The whisky is stronger than he expected, but pleasant. An intense smoky flavour spreads through his mouth.

“To leaving a legacy,” Aedion says as he tosses the glass back, the whisky sloshing dangerously inside. The general catches it with ease and drinks. He considers the glass in his hand, spinning it briefly before looking at Aedion, smiling.

“To freedom. Something they can never take away.” They both drink to that, one after the other, the general downing the last of it. He sets the glass on the table. “Something to remember, Aedion. A man gives his freedom. It is not taken, until he gives it up. Do you understand?”

“I- Yes.”

“Of course, it is often easier to give your freedom than keep resisting. That’s how they break some slaves. Keep pressing a man long enough, and one day he will just snap.” The general runs a hand through his hair, nimble fingers releasing the leather cord that holds it back.

“Freedom, as it is given, can be given back. Or taken back.” He runs his fingers through his hair, letting the rich golden strands tumble loose. “You can’t break, Aedion. You can bow to Adarlan, but you can’t break. Not now, and not as long as Terrasen needs you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” And he does understand. He knows what he’s giving up, and he will give it all a thousand times over if Terrasen demands it.

“Not even sixteen,” the general murmurs, sorrow heavy in his voice. “Yet I think you are already a man.”

The general smiles, sadly, pride mingling with sudden, wrenching grief, and reaches out a hand to touch the pale gold stubble growing on Aedion’s head.

“Grow out your hair, Aedion. I do think the gold will look good on you.”

 

xxx

 

By the end of the week, having weathered a ferocious snowstorm, Aedion emerges from his tent to find the camp firmly swaddled in snow. A few metres away, the general stands with his hands behind his back, head tilted up to the sky as if awaiting some kind of signal. His gargantuan frame looks smaller surrounded by all the white.

“Aedion,” he calls, without turning, his voice sharp and piercing in the still air.

“Yes?” Aedion makes his way to the man, legs sinking calf-deep in the snow.

“I’ll be leaving soon,” the general says softly, when Aedion is by his side. He lowers his voice further. “The Lord of Mortgard is coming to take command of this army, by order of the king of Adarlan.” He hesitates, just for a second, the kind of pause Aedion wouldn’t have noticed is he hadn’t been spending the past few days by the general’s side. The man takes a subtle breath, mulling over the scents in the air.

“Walk with me,” he directs. Aedion falls into step beside him, the larger man’s legs taking one stride to Aedion’s two. “The lord of Mortgard should have been here a good week ago, but he was delayed.” He ends that sentence abruptly, biting off the rest of the words. A steel grip descends on Aedion’s shoulder, keeping him moving forward. “I can’t be here when he arrives, do you understand?”

“Yes,” Aedion breathes, feeling the fine tremors running through the general’s hand on his shoulder.

They reach the general’s tent, where two soldiers stand guard. He dismisses them briskly and hurries Aedion inside, turning back to secure the tent flap. Behind him, Aedion stares in shock at the bare tent, stripped down to stark dirt flooring and the gently sagging canvas walls.

“What-” he starts, looking at the space where the table used to be. The general is already at the back of the tent, swinging a stuffed pack onto his back.

“I’ve packed,” he quips, and fastens a cloak about his shoulders. He crosses the tent swiftly, resting a warm hand on Aedion’s shoulder.

“I have to go.” The words are gentle. Somehow that makes it worse. The general looks down at the ground, not meeting Aedion’s eyes, and swallows 

“Where I’m going… I can’t remember any of this." 

“What do you mean?”

“If what I’ve seen here gets to the wrong people, something unthinkable will happen. I’m going to burn some of my memories out, locking them far down in my mind.” The general looks down at Aedion. He can see the uncertainty flickering in the taller man’s eyes. 

“My memories will still be there, buried somewhere, but I wouldn’t know them even if someone tried to torture them out of me.” The general forces a smile. His hands are clasped tightly together, knuckles popping out white. “I’ve never done this before,” he admits.

“Aedion.” At his name, Aedion draws himself up straight. The general studies him closely, eyes running over the lines of his face.

“You’re holding the key, Aedion. I’ll run now, but we’ll meet again, and when we do, you need to tell me this: ‘ _Blood calls to blood, Gavi, and the lion’s cub hunts alone.’_ I’ll know you then.”

“Gavi?”

The general smiles, sharp and fragile, eyes too-bright. “Someone I loved used to call me that.”

“Is it your name?” Aedion doesn’t know what it is that gives him the courage to ask, but the general looks like he’s about to break, spine drawing tight and deathly straight.

“My name has meant a lot of things, Aedion, but very rarely something to love. But yes, you can call me Gavi, if you like.” His hand falls on Aedion’s shoulder, squeezes gently. “My name.” There’s a strange note to his voice, almost warm, a little curious.

“Live well, Aedion, and remember me.”

“Of course.”

The general turns slowly and paces towards the door, thick cloak swept carelessly across his shoulders. He has the grim, hollow look of a man marching to his death.

“Raise a glass to freedom,” Aedion calls after him, the words tumbling out. The general pauses, putting a hand on the tent wall. He turns back, and a grateful smile crosses his face. “Something they can never take away,” he finishes softly, and blinks the bright sheen out of his eyes. “Thank you, Aedion,” he murmurs. “Take care of yourself.”

“And you.”

The general sweeps out of the tent, head up, cloak swirling around him as he steps out into the teeth of the wind. His hair streams out behind him, a brief golden banner. Clean, cold air sweeps a strong, wild smell through the tent.

Aedion catches a glimpse of a smile, and a raised hand in farewell. Then the tent flap falls closed, heavy canvas flapping, and he is left in the dark, alone in a grand, empty tent.

 

xxx

 

The lord of Mortgard takes a look at him, decides he has more problems than a scrawny thirteen-year-old, and sends Aedion back to confinement in his tent.

By the end of the week, he’s evidently remembered that Aedion exists, because he gives orders to Aedion’s guards, who waste no time in trussing him up and throwing him in a wagon bound for Adarlan.

At the last moment before they leave, Aedion hears muffled shouts and the sounds of a scuffle outside the wagon. He pulls himself to his feet, only to stagger back when the doors are thrown open and sunlight streams in, bright and blinding off the snow.

A man in the garb of an Adarlanian soldier is shoved up the steps and into the wagon, losing his balance and falling to his hands and knees on the rough wooden planking. He groans, struggling back upright. The guards laugh, spit, and slam the door shut, sealing them off in the dubious half-light of the wagon’s only window.

“Leave me alone,” the man growls before Aedion can say anything, voice deep and furious with shame. Aedion retreats, watching him crawl to the opposite corner, propping himself up wearily against the wall.

Beneath a fall of dirty black hair, one dark eye glares at Aedion.

“Aedion Ashryver.” He says it like it’s dirty, like Aedion’s name stains his lips and tongue just saying it. Disgust runs clear through his voice. Aedion stiffens against the wall of the wagon, feeling it jerk against the ruts in the road.

“Gods, you bloody traitor.” He slams a savage fist into the wooden floor, sending dust flying in a little cloud. “They speak of you like you were some kinda hero, you know? Some kinda _goddamn_ prince. Just up and vanished one day, _bam_ away inta’ the cold morning, poor lad, right after his first battle, but _I_ know where you were, and it seems princes got same coward’s blood as any man’s.” He spits. His shoulders shake; a quiet sob tears its way out of him.

“I got family here, prince, I got cousins been here years and years but now we’re at war and suddenly my own blood is my enemy. Between blood and my damn duty, and I choose blood.” He looks at Aedion, stubborn and defiant. Dark red blood leaks down his cheek from a cut that isn’t fully healed. “I won’t choose any country over my own family. I knew them since I was a boy, and better, more honest folks you can’t find. I won’t kill them, won’t take their land and rape their women and burn their houses. I ain’t no monster.” He turns away from Aedion and pounds his fist against the floor, repeating softly, “I ain’t no _monster_.”

 

xxx

 

Aedion loses track of how much time he spends in the wagon. Cold days and colder nights warm up as they head south, and narrow dirt tracks become hard-packed roads.

“Rifthold,” he hears one night, the word bouncing back and forth between their four guards as they eat dinner around a campfire. Aedion presses an ear to the planking, feeling splinters jab into his skin.

“Almost there, and better pray the king doesn’t send us up north again - naw, the lad’s on our side, it’s the other man turned traitor, king will want him - alright, alright, so both of them to the castle, what’s the difference, we’re going there anyway-”

Aedion glances at his fellow prisoner. A patchy beard crawls over his jaw, and the dark eyes are closed in sleep. Two traitors in this wagon, risking it all for Terrasen. He wonders what the king has it store for the man, and then decides he’d rather not know.

Aedion curls up against the wall of the wagon, pulling his cloak tighter around him, and drifts off to sleep, feeling the faint warmth of the fire as it crackles its way through the night.

 

xxx

 

The king of Adarlan, would-be conqueror of Erilea, sits at the very end of the throne room, flanked by brooding guards and one older, scarred man, with a thick beard, veiny hand gripping the eagle’s-head pommel of his sword.

Aedion makes his way up the middle of the room, taking his time, marking the faces of the nobles he passes. Most bear the darker hair and refined features of Adarlanian nobility, but he spies the sigils of some other countries’ envoys, split off from each other and kept just far enough from the other nobles that they are cut out of conversation. Guards stay an unobtrusive distance from them, and their own staff and escort are nowhere to be seen. The lanky, richly-dressed lord from Fenharrow watches Aedion with deep, inscrutable eyes and bows his head solemnly as Aedion walks by.

Aedion can see where most people stop when they address the king, the slightly discoloured patch of carpet where guards stand to either side, marking off the invisible line. He strides right past it, boldly continuing until, surprised, the older guard puts out an arm, saying, “No further, boy.”

Two guards hurry in from behind him and press down on Aedion’s shoulders, but he stays defiantly standing, though he doesn’t meet the king’s eyes.

The black-haired man stirs on his throne, leaning forward. A rush of whispers travels through the room and is quickly silenced. The king turns his head to look at his captain of the guards, and observes, “I’d hardly call him a boy, Brullo.”

“Your Highness,” the older guard responds, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, though he bows his head.

The king smiles faintly and turns back to Aedion. “You’ll excuse my Captain of the Guard, Aedion.” He says it like a shared joke, and the nearby nobles titter politely, the sound dying away as the king raises a hand.

“It is customary for lesser men to kneel in the presence of a king,” the king prods, leaning back in his throne. It’s black wood, ornately carved and beautiful in an overpowering manner, the jaws of a dragon roaring wide over the king’s head. Rubies glint in the dragon’s eyes and in the back of its throat.

The king cocks his head, watching Aedion through clear blue, deep-set eyes. Straight, fine black hair falls past his shoulders, upon which rests a superbly crafted golden crown. He rests his chin in one hand and grasps the armrest loosely with the other; he crosses one leg over the other, the very picture of indolent, careless power, and waits.

“You will excuse me, I am sure,” Aedion replies smoothly, projecting his voice to carry through the high-ceilinged hall. “I have just returned from a battlefield, and there I learned that there are no lesser men, only lucky ones.” He pauses. Unease flows through the court. The king’s hand tightens on the armrest, and he stiffens on the throne, the ease of his posture becoming just a little more forced. “I understand well that kings bleed just as much as men, and just as red. And as long as I still mourn Orlon Galathynius, I will not bow my head to any other king.”

“Bastard or no, no stiff neck will stop an executioner’s axe,” the king declares, voice gone dark and full with fury. He takes a breath, calming himself, and goes on. “You may be an Ashryver, bastard, but I’d hoped you had some brain.”

“I’m sure you hoped in vain, Your Highness,” one courtier drawls. A reckless, sly smile graces his face as mocking laughter rises up around the hall.

The king ignores him, eyes cool and intent on Aedion. “To the war camps, _prince,_ and be grateful I don’t send you to the salt mines. And if you survive that, we’ll see what you can do.”

Aedion takes the sentence without comment, sensing he’s pushed the king far enough already. At a nod from the king, the guards around Aedion turn in unison and escort him out, black boots ringing on the stone.

“Goodbye, prince,” the lord from Fenharrow mutters as he passes. “Remember us when you fight under _his_ banner.”

 

xxx

 

He spends two years in the war camps, collecting scars and muscle and swear words, building a reputation for being quick on his feet and hard with his fists. He learns to dance around larger men while he’s still small, but it serves him well through and after his growth spurts, when he’s near the tallest in the camp and broad-shouldered to boot. His grasp of strategy and effective teamwork, learned from tutors at an early age, makes him a brilliant leader in the field, and as time goes by his fellow soldiers learn to trust his judgement implicitly. A core band of soldiers forms around Aedion, loyal to the last breath, bunking and eating and sparring with him, drawn undeniably to his flame as stars that echo the moon.

And Aedion loves them. They aren’t many, but they are good people, down to their core, although the harshness of the war camp leaves a caustic, sharp tang on all of them.

“Raise a glass to the four of us,” he calls once, on a summer night with heat and animal life bursting all around them. He’s beaming, relaxed and happy, one arm slung over his friend’s shoulder. The other hand holds a bottle, gripping the neck loosely.

“Raise a glass,” Noja calls back across the fire, raising his own bottle to his lips. Noja is from Terrasen too, a fine archer and a better tracker, with a broken nose from the brawl he started the first day he came into camp.

“Drunkard,” Lienkar murmurs affectionately, poking Noja with a booted foot. “You’d take any excuse to drink.”

Noja smiles brilliantly at her, the firelight dancing over his face. “I’m from Terrasen, my lady. Drink is in my blood. As a matter of fact, more drink may be running through me now _than_ blood.”

Beside Aedion, Vyn snorts. “Give me the bottle, Aedion,” he drawls, reaching one dark, languid hand towards it. “Noja is thinking he’s funny again.”

Noja scowls, watching Aedion pass Vyn the bottle. Lienkar, hands behind her head, is gazing up at the night sky, watching the stars with a thoughtful expression.

“Drink with me,” she says to herself, twisting her head to look at the three men. “Drink with me to days gone by.”

“If you said drink, you can bet I’ll do it,” Noja rumbles. She laughs. “An old song, Noy. Surely you’ve heard of it.”

“Aye,” Noja replies, smiling. “But only the first two lines. Then I started on the ‘drink’.”

“Sing with me,” Vyn cuts in. “The songs we knew. That’s how it goes, doesn’t it, Lia?”

“Indeed,” Aedion mutters, surprising even himself. Rhoe would sing this, late at night with Orlon, trying to lure the king away from work for a moment. Orlon would laugh and push Rhoe away, but he couldn’t resist forever, and soon the brothers would be talking and laughing, grinning like boys.

“You know it, Aedion,” Lia says, satisfied. “Here’s to pretty girls who went to our heads,” she continues, eyes twinkling merrily.

“Here’s to witty girls who went to our beds,” Aedion sings, sweeping the bottle wide in an expansive gesture. Noja laughs.

“Here’s to them,” Vyn finishes, gesturing with the bottle, “and here’s to you.”

“Drink with me,” Noja begins again, “to days gone by.”

“To the life that used to be,” Lia sings, full-bodied and strong, music arcing out into the night with just a touch of wistfulness.

“Here’s to them,” Aedion toasts, gentle and sad. “And here’s to you.”

They finish off the bottles and spread out their bedrolls, stretching out under the stars. “Goodnight, my friends,” Vyn says quietly.

Aedion lies back, looking for the Lord of the North, trying to pin his thoughts on the star and not the rest of the lyrics, which run through his head swift-footed and stark: _Drink with me, to days gone by. Can it be you fear to die?_ He closes his eyes, which does not help. The tune is incessant and heavy with longing. _Will the world remember you when you fall? Can it be your death means nothing at all?_

And the last, and the worst: _Is your life just one more lie?_

 

xxx

 

Aedion does not see the king of Adarlan again for many months, but letters come in his thin, sharp handwriting, on parchment sealed with scarlet wax, and the camp begins to split neatly as  forces begin heading off in different directions. Noja is with Aedion, but Lia and Vyn are leaving for the Deserted Lands and Melisande respectively, captains of their own divisions, proud but maybe a little nervous as well.

Aedion leaves for the North, for Terrasen, because the king wants him to lead there as a symbol, to fracture the country further. He is allowed, by virtue of his knowledge of Terrasen, to choose the soldiers he feels will be best there, so he handpicks good men and women, many of them in the war camps because they were arrested for being dissenters or rebel sympathizers, and promises the king he will break them.

Of course, he does nothing of the sort, just goes about cementing their loyalty to him and him alone. They are his, and they will be Adarlan’s Bane.

 

xxx

 

When he arrives in Terrasen, he can hardly believe how it’s changed. Poverty has spread its roots through the towns and cities, exploiting the weakness left by the winter storms. Trade turned sluggish as soon as war broke out, and most of the farms Aedion passes as he heads north are abandoned, some of the buildings caved in with the snow piling determinedly on.

He settles the Bane in the far north of the Staghorn Mountains, sends hunting parties out with instructions not to touch the white stags. Deer being among the easiest things to hunt around here, he does not particularly care what they scrounge up instead, so long as they do not touch the sacred stags. He reinforces this with the threat of dying alone in the cold, stripped of supplies, bleeding out slowly to draw the ghost leopards. He is quite sure, after that, that no sacred stags will be harmed.

A missive comes the first day they are in camp. Plain parchment, just a scrap, and unsigned. The ink is blotchy, as if whoever wrote it was not used to writing often. It has just one word. _Traitor._

Aedion throws it in the fire and watches the edges curl up and blacken, watches the words fall into ash.

Then he rises, hands over command to Noja, and leaves the camp for Oakwald Forest, carrying with him only his sword and one of the king’s missives.

A couple of hours in he is stopped and surrounded by rebels, blindfolded, tied, and marched to the tent of a man he thought he’d never see again.

“Quinn,” he gasps, when they pull the black cloth off his eyes and shove him down into a wooden chair. The former royal guard looks like he’s aged decades instead of a few years. His hair has grown long, tied back in a ponytail, his jaw covered in brown-grey beard. There is a hollow look to the bones of his face, dark green eyes burning with slow anger.

Quinn looks like he’s struggling to speak, fists knotting where they rest on his lap. In his eyes is fury, and grief, and loss so deep Aedion thinks it’s carved a hole straight through to his heart.

“I loved her,” Quinn begins, finally, the words strangled in his throat. “I loved the Princess, and I thought you did too.”

Something flares up in Aedion’s chest at that, a burning that seizes his heart and twists relentlessly. “I did.”

Quinn closes his eyes, as if the sight of Aedion is too much to bear. His hair is dirty and oily, and stress and dirt has graven lines down his face. He sits stiffly, in thick leather armour with Terrasen’s stag-and-star burnt into the shoulder pauldrons and breastplate. The battleaxe Orlon gifted to him is resting against his chair, solid and heavy, the blade wiped clean and oiled, the keen edge catching the light.

“I should execute you,” he declares finally, slow and reluctant. “For treason against the state of Terrasen. That’s why you’re here, aren’t you, at the head of Adarlan’s army?” Aedion turns away from the pained determination in Quinn’s voice. Thick with muscle, Quinn’s arm descends, leather-gloved hand wrapping around the axe handle.

“Not for that, Quinn.” Aedion’s voice stops him, low and urgent. “Never for that.”

“Then for all the gods, _why did you flee?”_ Quinn’s voice rises and he stands from his chair, looming over Aedion and pinning him with a steel gaze. “No, I can take you leaving. But why did you return? For all the gods in the stars, Aedion, _why?”_

He speaks without thinking, simply, feeling the truth of the words in his heart and in his bones. “Because this is my home.”

Quinn draws back and crosses his arms over his chest. Something kindles in his eyes and then just as quickly dies away again. When he speaks, his voice is frighteningly level, held taut by tight control

“You were sent by the king of Adarlan.”

“Yes.”

Quinn doesn’t hesitate, but his voice grows harder. “You are here by his command.”

“Yes.”

“And… you plan to carry out his orders.”

“...No. Not truly.”

Something very close to a smile creeps over Quinn’s face.

“I turned myself in all those years ago to gain his trust. I’m here now in a position of command, with a mix of people picked for one thing: they were arrested for arguing against Adarlan. The fittest of the would-be rebels, the strongest… those who escaped the salt mines by the potential of their fighting power.” Aedion smiles, slow and brilliant, watching a matching grin rise across Quinn’s face.

“You’ve brought us help in the form of oppression.”

“I have never abandoned you,” Aedion replies. Their gazes meet, Quinn’s alight with fresh hope, Aedion’s tired but proud.

“Aedion,” Quinn warns, “the rebels will need more than your word to go on.”

“You believe me.”

A pause. “I’m not sure I do.” Quinn refuses to look away, but ugly shame crawls through his voice as he admits, “I haven’t seen you in years, Aedion. I had a duty to you and I failed it, and I don’t know who you are anymore.”

Aedion is struck silent.

Quinn clears his throat. “We need information, Aedion. Some proof the king trusts you, and that your men are loyal to you. And that above all, you are loyal to Terrasen.”

“I am,” Aedion swears. “By all the gods and the star-crowned stags, I am.”

“I know.” Quinn’s voice is soft but strong. “And it’d be enough for me, you know that. You loved the Princess as much as I did, and maybe more. You grew up under my watch, and I couldn’t believe the reports when they said you were riding back North with them. But the fighters under my command need more than an old guardsman’s word to put their lives in your hands.” The old determination is there in his voice, the solid promise of a man who stood and fought right alongside the men he loved. Quinn had never been one to back down.

“As for the first, I brought a missive from the king. It’s bound to my arm, under the sleeve.” Quinn retrieves the tightly furled parchment and cuts the twine, running a finger over the scraped-off red where the king’s seal used to sit, fat and proud.

Aedion watches as Quinn reads through it, anger darkening his angular features. At the end of the letter, he looks up, face pale with fury and hands flexing irregularly on the paper, twisting it to and fro.

_“Ashryver Bastard?”_ Quinn’s voice strangles itself into silence. He takes a breath and tries again. “ _That’s_ what he calls you?”

“I never knew my father.”

Quinn roars, an unworded, bestial expression of rage. His hands knot into fists in front of him, the parchment crumpling up, tearing in the middle.

“That _bastard!_ I- gods, I could _kill_ him! How _dare he!”_

He throws the parchment to the ground, looks at Aedion in the kind of silence that comes because passion has choked one’s voice and pushed it flat into quiet. Quinn paces away, struggling to regain control. Aedion remains silent.

Quinn spins, striding quickly and decisively to Aedion. “I’m taking you to the others,” he declares, cutting Aedion’s bonds with a quick slice of his belt knife. “They need to see- need to see that you aren’t a traitor, that you are _nothing close_ to that monster’s pet. I can’t have them looking down on you any longer.”

Aedion struggles to his feet, blood rushing through suddenly woken legs. “Quinn, I- you can’t take his words seriously, they’re just-”

“Just what?” Quinn demands, snatching up his axe and propelling Aedion out of the tent. “Just words, designed to cut every time you read them? Aedion-” Then he falls silent. 

Four rebel soldiers stand in front of them, not even attempting to disguise their shock. In their midst is Noja, nose broken again, blood streaming down his face and sinking crimson into the snow. His arms are twisted up behind his back, his scabbard empty by his side.

“Aedion,” he mutters. Quiet and angry. Emotion thrums in his voice - fury, shame, disbelief. Sorrow to kill a man made of stone, and in that moment Aedion is shocked, and human, and vulnerable.

“I didn’t think you would do this,” Noja starts, and one of the rebels hits him on the back of the head, snarling a warning. Noja’s legs are kicked out from under him and he half-falls, half-kneels, knees landing without a sound in the snow.

“Leave him alone,” Aedion says automatically, through wooden lips and a heart that feels like it’s slowly breaking in his chest.

“You can’t do this, Aedion,” Noja pleads, looking up at him. Somehow or somewhere he’s lost his cloak. The cold and wind has whipped his face stark white and the blood is dark and steady down his chin.

“You know you can’t win.”

“I must,” Aedion replies. “I must fight, and I will.”

Noja lets out a half-scream, a desperate laugh. The look in his eyes - broken and anguished and yet determined - gods above, he’d never seen Noja fall apart and now that he is, it feels like he’s taking Aedion with him, too. This is _Noy,_ his brother, his friend, and if he’s ever needed him it’s now but Aedion must instead stand away, must stand alone on the opposite side and watch his right-hand man kicked to his knees in the snow and do nothing, must watch it all happen in front of him and stand frozen.

“I thought -” Noja pauses, realisation lighting in his eyes. “That’s why you picked the people you did. You planned this all along, didn’t you? Three years together, and you never told me.” He shakes his head. “Lia? Vyn?” He demands. “Did they know? Do you think they’d follow you into this?”

“No,” Aedion snaps, voice cold. “None of them knew.” He can feel what this is coming to, can taste the sour inevitability on the air.

Noja initiates it. “There’s no stopping you, is there?” The tone of his voice indicates he already knows the answer.

“No.”

Noja draws breath and Aedion remembers he is from Terrasen too, knows the old customs and what is and is not permissible in times of war.

He hears the challenge, sees the rebels step away and circle them, feels Quinn’s rough hand on his shoulder. “You can refuse,” Quinn reminds him, voice harsh. Aedion knows he can’t. “I’ll want your axe,” he replies, and feels Quinn step away.

Noja’s sword is returned to him. More rebels appear, watching, hovering around the edges of the circle that has sprung up. Quinn comes back, hands Aedion the axe, silent.

This is executioner’s work, Aedion thinks, spinning the long haft of the battle axe in his hands. Heavy and solid and more than sharp enough to do his duty. He prowls closer, axe in hand, feet light on the snow.

Noja has never been good enough to beat him. In archery they are equals, but never in direct combat. The outcome of this match is already decided, and Noja knows it, but that doesn’t stop him lifting his sword as Aedion approaches.

“Don’t do this,” Aedion commands, voice low, but it falls on deaf ears. Noja slides away, sword at the ready.

Executioner’s work. How much blood will he have on his hands before this is over?

They clash, one, two, three quick strikes before disengaging, circling each other. Noja is panting, quick clouds of breath misting before him.

“They won’t follow you,” Noja warns.

“I think they will,” Aedion replies, and rushes him. Sorrow swells thick and choking in his heart but his strikes look effortless, graceful even, as he batters his way past Noja’s guard and knocks him to the ground, kicking away his sword.

“Yield,” he pants, hands hot around the axe handle. Noja just shakes his head, contempt and anger sharp in his face. He tilts his head upwards, baring his throat, and looks straight at Aedion, stubborn and unrelenting.

He’s still staring when Aedion hefts the axe well above his head and drives it down, blood trailing from the blade as it falls.

 

xxx

 

It is hard, after watching that duel, to think that Aedion’s loyalties lie anywhere other than Terrasen, or doubt how far he will go for his country.

The rebels welcome him, some with suspicion, some stiffly, but others with gratitude and curiosity. He sits with their leaders that night, and the dark hours of the next morning see him back at the Bane’s camp.

Aedion breaks the news to the Bane without fanfare, reminding them of why they were in the war camps in the first place, and reminding them that if they fought here and now, there was hope for other countries as well. There is no choice, really: they are here now and they must fight. He draws a hard line and holds them to it, and if he feels guilty at all for making them all tread the precarious path he has chosen, it doesn’t show.

He dismisses them after that, declaring it a free day, and disappears into his tent. The rebels are in the woods by now, ringing the camp with bows and arrows, ready to pick off those who try to run. The messenger bird cages are watched day and night.

By the end of the month, he will either have a completely loyal force, or one staggering about as a skeleton of its former self. Come what may, this month will determine his future.

 

xxx

 

It turns out well enough, fortunately for Aedion, and after a few failed, if valiant, efforts, the rebels and the Bane begin to cooperate. They stage their first climactic battle, which occurs quite cordially and with a great deal of teamwork as they work together to tear down a town, salvaging the good materials for repair projects around the country. Aedion writes briefly to the king, noting a casualty count and requesting more supplies be sent. Near the end, he adds that locals have approached him about joining the legion.

This last is a lie, but it will seem like his numbers are being continually replenished, and it saves Aedion the trouble of acquiring new soldiers who can work for his cause. Two months in, he catches a deserter heading for Adarlan and executes him. The man is the last of his trouble.

The king writes back, pleased that Terrasen’s locals are warming up to the idea of Adarlan. He sends more uniforms and weapons.

The rebels receive the weapons. They begin to train together with Aedion’s legion, the friendly competition bringing out the best of the diverse fighting styles in the camp.

Aedion is beginning to quite enjoy himself when he receives a summons back to Rifthold.

Quinn assures him he’ll look after the rebels, and Aedion appoints someone he trusts to watch the Bane. He brings south long lists of real enough logistics, and faked injury reports from his infirmary, which has little to do but tend injuries from training. He expects the king wants little more than a progress report in person.

He was almost right. He reports to the king in his audience hall, surrounded by nobles. Eyllwe is hanging on desperately, is what he hears from the gossip in the room. Fenharrow is mostly subjugated, and the Western Wastes ignored almost entirely. Nobody has seen a witch in years, is how the talk runs. Adarlan’s Bane is doing well enough in the North, who would’ve thought, the Ashryver lad himself.

The king commends him publicly, blue eyes darker than he remembered and more blank than seems natural. When the king asks what reward he would have for his service, Aedion casts about in his mind and comes up with an heirloom: the sword of Orynth. Aelin can have it, when he sees her in the afterlife. It belongs to her, by the blood in her veins. For now, he will carry it, if for nothing else than to see it used again and out of the hands of this murderer.

The king laughs and the assorted lords and ladies sneer. The new Captain of the Guard, a young man with brown hair who fancies himself a fighter, clenches his jaw and fights to keep a flash of disgust off his face. Aedion keeps his face blank and imagines how easy it would be to just step forward and knock the man unconscious.

Laughter subsides, and the king waves a generous hand. “Alright,” he allows. “You may have it.” Like gifting a toy to a child. Anger burns in the back of his mouth, but he bows his head, murmurs, “Your Majesty,”, every inch the obedient warrior.

He is seated with the Crown Prince later that night, at a repugnantly opulent banquet to celebrate his return to the capital. To celebrate Aedion Ashryver, the Whore of Adarlan, the shame and blight of Terrasen. The Crown Prince is decent company, a wild partier and wilder partner if half the stories are true, but the Captain of the Guard is sullen and serious, always pulling at the prince to be more responsible. Disgusting. Aedion decides then and there that he is taking the Crown Prince of Adarlan out and drinking him under the table, preferably later tonight.

He escapes the banquet early, exuding arrogance and disdain to anybody watching, and makes his way up to the Crown Prince’s rooms, lounging against the wall and waiting there. When the Prince arrives, it is by himself, walking more softly than Aedion had expected. He starts at the sight of the large man leaning up against the corridor wall.

“Come along, prince,” Aedion commands, pushing himself off the wall and to his feet. “We have taverns and pretty women to visit.”

“I’d heard you were into boys,” the Crown Prince comments, falling into step easily beside Aedion. Aedion just quirks a grin at him. Rumours. Perhaps a little true.

They head out that night, the Crown Prince donning a black cloak with a deep hood. Halfway out the castle gates, they hear running footsteps. It’s the Captain of the Guard, that Westfall boy, one hand on his sword and frustration in his face.

“Dorian,” he begins, “you can’t just-”

“Leave the castle?” Aedion cuts in. “I think you’ll find he can, as the Crown Prince. What - ah, apologies - _who_ are you?”

“The Captain of the Royal Guard, _sir_ ,” Westfall snaps, adding, “and a better man than you.” If he’s intimidated by Aedion’s size, he doesn’t show it.

“ _Sir,”_ Aedion mocks, and slings an arm around the Prince’s shoulders. “Prince, we should teach your _friend_ here the meaning of fun.” He casts a contemptuous glance at Chaol. “Have you even bedded a woman yet?”

The Captain sputters, cheeks flushing red, but the Prince just laughs. “Live a little, Chaol,” he advises. “Ashryver, the best for beer is this way, but we ought to have a little strong liquor tonight, don’t you think?”

“I absolutely agree,” Aedion says cheerfully, hearing the Captain hurrying along behind them. “A night such as this deserves good drinks.”

 

xxx

 

He stays in Rifthold for three months, partying his way through the excessive luxury, drinking himself senseless when the king allots him an allowance for ‘seeing Rifthold’s finer attractions’. And he does see attractions, touring the finest brothels in the capital, no woman or man off limits to the dangerous Ashryver prince with the long golden hair.

The attractions fail to make an impact. There is no _essence_ to Rifthold, just an empty city repeating its motions again and again, the vicious underbelly teeming with its own petty, foolish thugs and gangs.

The banquets and feasts and sumptuous balls go on, the ridiculous decadence in the glass castle a world away from the dirty, narrow alleys of the city below. Aedion gains a reputation for his unrestrained vices; it is said he has the best, and therefore worst, parties in the city, that he can outdrink anyone, that the women are competing over him. The Crown Prince drops out, the Captain of the Guard looking on with stiff disapproval. Aedion knocks out four guards during a sparring match, and they hold no grudges against him, only admiration. He smirks at Westfall and walks away when the smaller man tries to confront him afterwards.

There are furtive whispers that there are two kings in Rifthold, and it is the younger one who holds the people’s love. There is always love to be found for a man who sits in the common taverns, who is dashing and reckless and bold, who celebrates life wildly every day with no thought to tomorrow.

Aedion is king of the city, king of the pubs and taverns and brothels, king over everything he might have ever wanted in life, save that he is Aedion and it could never be his home.

 

xxx

 

Aedion yawns and stretches, long limbs sprawling across the bed. “How much time have we left?” he asks, voice muffled against the bedsheets.

“An hour yet, my dear,” Xeras informs him, the lean planes of his body just visible from where Aedion lies.

Aedion rolls off the bed, rising smoothly to his feet in front of the courtesan. “Then kiss me,” he says gently, hands coming up to rest on the high, delicate cheekbones of the man’s face. Xeras complies gladly.

 

xxx

 

Aedion Ashryver in action is a marvel, but there is still a limit to how many men even a massive, experienced warrior can take down past midnight in a narrow alley with limited visibility.

Tonight the limit is fifteen, because they come with knives and swarm Aedion instead of going one on one. Eleven men file out of the alley after the better part of an hour, leaving behind five battered, weary men and the smell of blood in the air.

Xeras arrives past one, swamped in a rich, dark cloak, the insignia on the back of it enough warning for the watching eyes to leave him alone. “Aedion,” he mutters, kneeling down next to the largest dark mass on the alley floor, “you must stop doing this to yourself.”

They make it back to the brothel, somehow, one hulking, bent-over man leaning on a slender one, blood and bruises covering the broad expanse of his body.

“I don’t know what you punish yourself for,” Xeras sighs later, running bandages and salve across Aedion’s back. “Need there be a reason?” Aedion grumbles. “No, I suppose not,” Xeras replies, gentle hands warm against Aedion’s discoloured skin.

 

xxx

 

Aedion is sent back after three months of the most depraved partying he can manage, because the lord treasurer is worried about Rifthold’s economy and the royal budget, and the king has been hearing rumours of rebels plaguing Oakwald Forest. Aedion bows his head to royal command, tips a wink to the Crown Prince, and leaves the city on a crisp morning with winds blowing strong off the Avery.

Half an hour later, he crests a hill, reverses his cloak, and loops back towards the city. Xeras will be awake by now, and though he cannot bring him back North with him, he can at least say goodbye, can do better than leave the man waiting for a lover who will never return.

He leaves his horse outside the city and slips through the roads on foot, scaling the wall under Xeras’ window to look in on the man stirring a mug of tea, dark hair thick and messy in the golden morning light. _I didn’t think I’d fall in love with you._

Aedion hangs from the window ledge a moment, savouring the comfort of the scene: Xeras, shirtless and relaxed in the warmth of the apartment, long fingers wrapped around the full mug. A quiet night for the male courtesan, and a peaceful morning. Aedion hates that he will ruin it.

He almost turns away right there, coward that he is, considers leaving the letter and the package he brought at the door. But it’s too late. Xeras turns, sees Aedion, and almost drops the mug.

He opens the window, stepping aside to let Aedion vault in, and then shuts it again, firmly, against the wind and the noise. There is a long moment while Aedion watches him and he watches the window, one hand light against the grain of the wooden sill.

“I heard you were leaving,” the courtesan says finally, evenly, though he does not turn to look at Aedion. His words leave a foggy imprint on the clear glass and his hands shake, just a little, as he continues, “I see it is true.”

“I’m sorry,” Aedion attempts, but the words are too little, short in the silence. King and duty leave little room for love.

“Don’t be.” Despite his words, Aedion can hear the low curl of anger in the courtesan’s voice.

“I am.” He pauses. The letter in his hands is smooth and stiff, paper warming up against his skin. “I brought something for you.”

At that, the courtesan whirls, gray eyes cold with freezing anger. “If you think a gift will-”

“Not that. Not this gift.” Aedion looks down, fingering the edge of the paper. “There’s a deposit box in the vaults of RIfthold’s bank. In my name.” He looks up. Xeras’ gray eyes are still hard and somehow his anger is harder to face than the scorn of all the royal court. “I’ve left instructions to let you through.”

“In the box is money. Enough for you to buy your freedom, or take ship from Rifthold and to another continent. Or you could stay, buy belongings and a lock for your door, chocolates for the younger kids. I thought I’d let you decide.”

SIlence, and then, “You damn fool.” Xeras’ voice, soft and vehement. “Gods, you damn  _fool_.” He rushes Aedion, the strength in the wiry courtesan’s body taking him by surprise. They embrace tightly, leather and wool against bare skin. Aedion buries his head in Xeras’ dark hair and tries to say anything other than goodbye.  

Xeras turns his head to speak against Aedion’s shoulder, chin hard against the taller man’s collarbones.

“Thank you, Aedion,” he whispers. Louder, “I’ll make a life for myself,” he promises. “Somehow. I can’t leave the little kids here, but I’ll get there.” Aedion feels the curve of his smile, feels soft lips press against his collarbone. The sweet smell of tea lingers faintly in the air.

“I know you will.”

 

xxx

 

When he returns to the Bane, he finds that there _are_ rebels in Oakwald Forest, which in itself is not much of a surprise. What he needs to know is where the king is getting his information from, so he orders a watch kept and all communication in and out of the camp suspended.

Quinn puts the rebel spies out to try and catch the king’s spies, and drags in an informant on the third day, a Terrasen native hoping to gain favour with the king. He refuses to repent, and neither Quinn nor Aedion has a good place to hold him, so at midnight they drag him up a mountain and execute him there, leaving the body to the big cats.

Aedion uproots the Bane and marches them down to Orynth, treading the barely-there line between the people’s love and hate. Some places they come to are rebel dens and enough influence has seeped through the townspeople for men to come up and clap Aedion on the back, or for women to shoot him secret, grateful smiles across the room. On more than one occasion he finds a basket of winter-dried foods or cakes, covered with cloth, placed just inside his tent.

But in other towns the windows are boarded up, the service in the taverns sullen and cold, and children watch them march through behind the protective arms of their parents.

When they camp near those towns Aedion doubles the watch and stalks grimly through the night, unable to sleep, ghosting through the woods and around the perimeter of the camp, the watchfires burning like jagged jewels in a crown.

When they reach Orynth, that city of white marble and towering spires, that city of cracked, ugly stone and dirty makeshift hovels, Aedion hands over command to his lieutenant and turns right back round, wheeling his horse around hard and riding at a breakneck gallop out of the capital, cloak swirling behind him as if blown by the storm of his rage.

Riding solo, Aedion reaches the foot of the Staghorns in a few days, stabling his horse in one of the smaller towns dotting the lower slopes. Then he sets out on foot, forsaking the red cloak that deems him Adarlan’s general and donning one of deep black, the colour of old grief and blood spilt under the moonlight.

Aedion Ashryver’s body is strong and healthy and has almost never failed him, but that night old scars pull cold on his skin and his knees give out when he has crested the first peak, his lungs burning and an empty, echoing silence in his head.

He pulls himself back up, hands bitten numb by the wind and the snow, and hauls himself on, trying to forget what Orynth looked like in his youth, trying to forget the thriving crowds and laughing children, trying to forget the festivals and the colour and the pulsing life running through the city.

He walks on til dawn, staggering through knee-high snow, knowing he hasn’t seen the true howling ice at the heart of the Staghorns yet, the deep fissure said to split a whole mountain in two, the wind screaming as it tears between stark black walls of rock. Maybe if he forgets what Orynth looked like he will think it should be the way it is now, city of the hungry and forsaken.

It is said that the crack wails because it is a hole torn into another world, that the earth was split by a great force and still struggles to pull itself back together, that it would take a god to mend its shrieking.

It is said that if a man looked into the crack he could see the face of the devil, fragmented and reflected, that the devil was a god, starving and chained, that any man who dared look into the crack came out changed or dead. That going to the crack was akin to killing yourself, because the man you were would not survive.

Aedion climbs further north, ice forming on his brow, on his lashes, dragging down the heavy wool of his cloak. For a day and a night he follows the tracks of a ghost leopard, coming at last to the frozen carcass of its kill, blood dark red on the bleached white bones of a great buck. An encounter with an old wolf leaves him with marks down his leather armour and a missing mitten. His cloak flies raggedly from his shoulders, black wool torn.

Still he plows on. Cold will not make him stop now. He thinks, just once, of Aelin, when he is huddled in a crevice with the snow roaring on outside. Snow would not have hurt _her_ , he thinks, and then he cannot get his queen out of his head.

Gods, she should have lived. Captain Westfall, Dorian Havilliard - they were still so _young._ How was it that the gods let Aedion drink to the early hours of the morning and didn’t save _her?_ If one of them should have lived, it was Aelin; he’d march down into the Dark God’s realm for her, but even now he knew he couldn’t face her knowing he’d walked away from their kingdom, from the land they’d both loved.

He was going to take the blood oath. That was what killed him, inside, the fact that if they’d been bonded he’d have known when she needed him. Gods above, how _stupid_ to plan for tomorrow when she’d needed him five years ago and he hadn’t _been there_.

He could’ve delayed the killer, given Aelin his horse and told her to _run, my Queen, run,_ but he hadn’t and she was dead now, five years dead, and here he was, with a different cloak and a different horse and the sword of her ancestors slung across the wrong person’s back.

How she’d look at him now, liar and traitor, Adarlan’s executioner. He’d left his honour somewhere far behind him, on a grave dug by moonlight and the cooling body of an old hunter, left as a last gift to the man they all thought he’d grow into.

The night when the King of Adarlan had come to feast, the night when Aelin had burned and burned in an ancient hall, when she had been screaming, when her own mother doused her head to toe with chill water; he should’ve known then. And when news came from the summer house that they were dead - he should’ve known his duty, should have stayed in the keep and bowed his head to Orlon, the only king he had left, but he mounted his horse and rode through the night, fled Orynth for the summer house, fled the sure knife in the dark that was coming for anyone of royal blood. Cowardice. Fear was more powerful when you were thirteen years old and still thought you valued your life, and he’d been half-crazed, certain that Aelin wasn’t dead, that he would have felt it somehow, that he would’ve known if she’d been just ripped away, but he hadn’t.

Aedion staggers on, slogging through snow that hasn’t seen a human in years, crossing silent, solemn mountains that are home only to the great snow-beasts, treacherous ice slicking the surface of steady black rock. Fleeing Orynth again, after all those years. The Ashryver Bastard, still fleeing his duty.

He hasn’t seen a ghost leopard in what feels like weeks, though he glimpsed a massive wolf, thick coat white against the snow, and heard its haunting, mournful cry, devastating in its loneliness.

He doesn’t know when he runs out of food, just that his body does not carry him as far before he needs to rest, and that raw meat ripped from the bone doesn’t taste as bad when it’s the only thing he can catch. These mountains live in eternal winter, and plants and all their fruits belong in spring. Gods, what a bleak, desolate landscape.

Unbidden, memories come to him, flashes of the past standing pale and ghostly in the present. He remembers the first lesson Rhoe taught him, feels the weight of the first sword he was ever allowed to hold. Rhoe and Orlon spar in the corner of his eye, fearsome power tempered by fierce control, but when he turns there is only the aching cry of the wind and snow, endless snow, blowing across the mountain.

He sees his mother again, but she is smiling, arm-in-arm with a tall, golden-haired man, their faces lost to his memory. Deep, contented happiness radiates from them. Then his mother vanishes and mournful eyes bow Aedion down, the golden-haired man alone, tattoos curling over his shoulder and down his chest. Aedion recognizes the newest word, edges grief-sharp and stark black. _Love._

He continues. The snow pulls at his feet and the wind hammers at him and he tears his hand open climbing a cliff face, but something keeps dragging him forward, past the point where any ordinary man would have given out, past the point where his body threatens to collapse on him and leave his soul wandering the Staghorns forever.

Aedion does not know when or how he falls to his knees, just that he is really and truly finished this time, and he is just going to close his eyes and _weep_ for sheer weariness when there is a nudge on his hand. A cold, wet nudge. Two colossal hooves thud down in the snow next to his bowed head and he hears a snort. Warm air brushes past his face, pushing limp locks of fair hair aside.

Aedion lifts his head. It takes a humongous effort, but at least the snow seems to have stopped falling. Heat emanates from the beast in front of him, cutting through his clothes and chasing away the numbness in his head. Aedion brings a stiff hand up to his forehead and pulls his hair back. The cut on his hand is frozen shut.

It’s hard to get up again, but somehow he makes it to his feet, one knee before him and then the other, slipping in the loose snow. The beast backs away, huffing, and Aedion sees it stands much taller than him, a great animal with a shaggy, frost-edged coat, white on white. Ivory antlers spread from its proud head, a pale tangle of gleaming bone in the cool purple of dawn.

The titanic stag lowers his head, the tips of his antlers brushing the snow cleanly. A wild challenge rides in his dark eyes as he stares down Aedion.

_Lord of the North,_ Aedion thinks. _Lord of the North._ He stretches out a shaking hand to the stag. _Take me home and let me rest._

The sun is rising beyond the mountain, a brilliant disk of light hovering just above the stag’s noble head, and Aedion can see where the flame and star came from; held by the bony fingers of the stag’s antlers, the sun sends lines of fire racing down the stag’s silhouette. The Stag of Terrasen, and the star it holds above its head. Warmth straightens Aedion’s limbs and steadies his trembling, and with a certainty that settles in his heart he knows he is to follow the stag, even if it is to his death.

The stag blinks once, as if in acceptance, and turns, stepping away easily on the top of the snow. Aedion wades along beside him, finding that his breath comes easier in his lungs and that energy is beginning to return to his body.

Gods, the Lord of the North. He has no idea how long he’s been away from his Bane, but he thinks they’ll be alright. They’re good people, mostly, and the officers he set over them are very capable.

Aedion walks with the stag all day, and as dusk falls the stag nudges him towards a cave, the entrance worryingly narrow at first, but opening up the further he crawls in. He finds a tiny pool of water, fed by steady drops from the ceiling, and washes his face for the first time in days, startled when he feels how much thinner his face has become. Gaunt, probably, if he could but see himself to confirm it.

He curls up with his cloak under his head and sleeps soundly, dreaming of fire to melt the snow.

When he wanders out of the cave shortly after dawn he finds the stag waiting for him, unruffled despite the brisk wind whipping snow against its milk-white coat. It leads him on, picking its way through the mountain passes with a surety that confounds. Aedion does not see any predators that day, but small animals abound, and by the time the sky begins to darken he has caught enough meat to fill his belly.

He dares to touch the stag, just once, and feels at once both its natural pelt and a humming, immense power that fills him with heat. The stag gazes at him with inscrutable eyes.

They continue on. On the third day Aedion begins to hear faint strains of a thin, anguished noise, floating to them on the still mountain air. The stag shakes its head, irritable, and continues, Aedion following loyally.

 

xxx

 

He hears it before he sees it, the deep cry of rushing wind echoing off rock, the unbridled anger of a savage beast brought to bay. A despairing cry rises above it all, wordless and agonized.

He scales the last cruel stretch of rock and stands gasping, squinting against the glare of the sun on the snow. The noise is much louder now, thundering in the belly of the mountain. Aedion swears he feels the mountain shake.

The stag is in front of him, head held stiffly high. It swings its head to regard Aedion, eyes gleaming with the terrible certainty of having done something not to be proud of, but that which had to be done.

Aedion takes a deep breath and steps forward, eyes locked to the stag. Behind it, a thin line of black falls away, down and down, the top of a crack so sudden and severe it seems newly cut.

The wind picks up again, harrying Aedion almost desperately. His cloak billows and snaps behind him, black wool breaking free the rim of frost that has formed on the edge. At the edges of the rift, he can see the flurries of ice and snow that the wind has whipped free, screaming as it races headlong down the massive split.

The sides of the rift are solid, impenetrable black rock, ledges feathered with snow. Aedion can’t see the bottom of the rift, has been driven almost to his knees on the flat mountain top. A piercing, full-throated cry is bouncing off the sides of the mountain, a scream of endless fury and looping, all-encompassing madness, an anguished bellowing of hopeless rage. Aedion shivers in a way that has nothing to do with the cold.

The stag stands frozen on the edge, snow dusting its sides and head. For the first time, it looks old, and small, and tired. Words flow in Aedion’s head, a story painted in flickers of light and blazing emotion, the glimpses of an era long past flying past his eyes. A lone man with a slender golden crown on his head faces a laughing, otherworldly presence, the shard of black in his hand shining to dwarf them both.

_A very long time ago, when Brannon first came to this continent, there was one last Valg king. One last demon, safe in his crown of ice-capped mountains. Or so he thought. Brannon fought him, but the Wyrdgate was sealed by then, and to keep the king in the Wyrdkey was madness. So he chained him. Here. In the dark, held prisoner in his own mountains. By himself, unable to move or eat or even see the world he’d loved with his great icy heart. Unable to die. All he can do is scream, and scream he has, for hundreds of years, past generation upon generation, and when you listen as I have you can hear how his very heart has changed._ A weary, bitter anger echoes in Aedion’s skull, rattles against his jaw and begs to be let loose.

_I, his only companion, his jailer and bearer of news, his only friend in the whole wide world, and I can’t let him go._

“Why?”

_Your great hero. Brannon of the Wildfire. He bound me to watch over Terrasen, and watch over it I have. He charged me never to release the Valg king. I don’t think he knew quite how immortal the Valg are. In his eyes, the Valg could never change._

_This is the heart of Terrasen, Prince. This is the burden we all bear, and why no man can return from this edge. Terrasen is founded on cruelty, on captivity and a refusal to grant mercy. I, the Lord of the North. Jailer, captor, remorseless guardian. Do you understand? This is the heart of the nation you so love, and here it is: a chained devil, driven mad by the taunting wind and the ageless shift of the ice. Here it is: one without any more malice, one who would weep till the tears ran down his cheeks… if he could so cry. I know his heart as well as I know my own, and I am sick with the knowledge of what I do to him._

Then Aedion hears it: the horrible regret, and the guilt, and the longing, the lowest, most raw layer of the dreadful, heartbroken cry.

Gods, they were wrong. It was no god that split this mountain; Brannon was no god, just a man, unknowing and vengeful and bleeding, and the way the Valg king sounds now… he could echo Aedion’s own heart, the torment and turmoil, the sound of one who is the very last of his kind, standing alone on the edge and holding the very barest flicker of hope to keep going.

Aedion knows with a chilling certainty that the Valg king has never broken, has never given up, is still fighting for his own freedom and his own life all the way at the bottom of the pit.

_Can’t we free him?_

_I can’t, and you can’t. One who bears the mark of Brannon might be able to, but Aelin Galathynius was the last. And it is not up to us to make that decision._

_You said he wouldn’t kill anybody._

_And do you know so?_

Aedion doesn’t need to think this over; it is an answer as familiar to him as his own voice, as his own lungs, as his own heart. _When you are that lost, and wounded, and have suffered that greatly… you don’t want any more suffering. No more pain, for you or for anyone else, and you will hold to that as far as you are able._

_And how do you know this, Aedion of the Staghorn Mountains?_

He looks deep into the stag’s eyes, lifts his chin and gazes steadily at the Lord of the North until it turns away.

_I think you already know._

There is a touch of respect, mind to mind, the link running deep down and suddenly Aedion can see all; the forests and the rivers and the rebels in their camps; the graves of Terrasen’s army, five years gone, the ghost leopards and the rabbits in their burrows, the swooping hawk with a mouse in its talons, the Bane arrayed neatly on the outskirts of Orynth and the villagers hauling water for crops, the ancient hungry warrior-god howling his sorrow out to the world, chained by a king many years dead, the thrumming veins of life running all through the land. Aedion feels a fierce surge of love for his country, and he knows the stag feels it too.

It lowers its head, bowing gravely to Aedion. One long antler gouges a smooth line in the snow.

_Go, Aedion, and go in peace._ There is a faint hesitation. _I wish Terrasen had more with hearts like yours._

Aedion surprises himself, saying, _There are. You just have to know where to look._ He bows deeply, carefully, to the great white stag and the god it guards, both bound so firmly by the word of a king. Words rise in his throat, cramming together until he cannot speak. There cannot be words to describe how he feels, so he sends it all to the stag, trusting it to understand. _Goodbye, Lord of the North._

 

xxx

 

Aedion returns to Orynth a good week later, taller and paler, the lines of his face and body more cleanly cut. He is stronger, now, his reflexes that much more quick, the movements of his body smoother, the power evident in every action he makes.

The sword of Orynth fits his hand as if he was born to it. His senses have been honed, sharper, more attuned to the world around him, his hair a true gold in the sun instead of pale, and the people whisper about Aedion Ashryver, touched by the gods.

Adarlan’s Bane, they call him, that more-than-human figure at the head of Adarlan’s army, that bastard swordsman and legendary commander; the man who walks in past and present like history is wrapping itself around him.

Adarlan’s Bane, they call him; that grim spectre, blackhearted, an irredeemable creature of the night. Adarlan’s Bane, they call him; the ruthless fighter leading the rebellion against the tyrant king, bold and ferocious.

Adarlan’s Bane, they say, anything other than human, for no man could bear that burden he holds up alone, the world on his broad shoulders.

Adarlan’s Bane; a wolf, a demon; more than a man and less than a god, sworn to Terrasen till the day he dies.

Aedion Ashryver is a man, weary and sick at heart, who has loved and lost and fought in countless battles, who is much older than his eighteen years. Aedion Ashryver is both beast and man, flesh and blood and magic running in his veins, Prince of a conquered country, abandoned boy doing the best he can in a world that tried to leave him behind. He burns bright in the time he has, burns for Aelin and Rhoe and Orlon and the father he never knew, burns for history and love and anger, burns for spite and loss and the loneliness eating his heart hollow. Aedion Ashryver, blood and blade sworn many times over to Terrasen, the country he loves - Aedion Ashryver, blessed by Terrasen’s old gods, protector of the chained demon, king of the common people.

Aedion Ashryver, the lion's son, heart of the land and last of the crown, Wolf of the North.


End file.
